Captured by the TVA, and an unexpected turn

The cuffs clicked around her wrists, and a maddening time-twister around her neck. And, naturally, they’d neglected to offer a jumpsuit.

“In fairness, this was your own fault. If you’d gone through intake normally, you’d be in the same place as you are right now, just dressed,” Ravonna had said.

Sylvie had grumbled, blushed, and glowered. The cuffs prevented her from covering up, and severely limited her opportunities to escape, though she did awkwardly angle her thighs to try and at least hide her blonde fuzz.

Sylvie looked down, hair hanging low either side of her face, hiding her mortified blush as she was led, step by step, through the TVA’s hallways. A nudge of an inactive baton in the small of her back, or in the middle of her butt, kept her moving.

She did her best to focus on the environment, focus on looking for any opening, and not dwell on the myriad eyes watching her as she walked by.

And she was led, not to the courtroom, or to an interrogation room, but to an office. Ravonna took a seat behind her desk, evidently less than happy, and gestured for Sylvie to take the sofa. The guards were dismissed, though Ravonna pointedly kept one hand on the control of Sylvie’s time-twister, apparently rendering escape impossible.

“So, what’s this?” Sylvie said, as bravely as she could with soft furnishings against her bare skin. She awkward crossed her long legs, barely feeling like it hid anything. “When you gloat?”

Her face was burning. She shifted with what miniscule amounts of dignity she could muster, unable to do anything to cover her breasts with her hands behind her back.

Ravonna, meanwhile, didn’t look quite as smug as she’d expected. She was, though, back in her original uniform. Sylvie’s heart sank.

Ravonna turned a small-screen TV around on her desk, tuning it to the right channel; Sylvie was treated to a glimpse of the TVA’s cells. Yelena, as nude as she had been before she’d taken Ravonna’s clothes, was being bundled into a memory cell, a red doorway etched in the air. Sylvie closed her eyes.

“Your companion was apprehended not long before you were,” Ravonna said, dispassionately. “As you can see, your attempted insurrection was a failure, again.”

“So I was right. You are gloating,” Sylvie said.

Ravonna pursed her lips. It was a few moments before she spoke.

“You have no understanding of what we do here,” Ravonna said, at last, voice sounding as though it was a conscious effort to keep under control. “Nor of what your last… attempt caused.”

“If you’re just going to lecture me, I’d rather be pruned now and get it over with,” Sylvie said.

Better that, than dwell on failing. On losing. And on the nudity, it was very hard to forget that detail.

Ravonna sighed.

“I would,” Ravonna said. She grimaced. “But Agent Mobius seems to think we’ve a better option.”

Sylvie raised an eyebrow.

“He thinks we should ask for your help,” Ravonna said.

Sylvie stared. Then started laughing, crumpling forwards, almost too distracted to pay attention to the feeling of her breasts brush the back of her thighs. She was still laughing when, eventually, she shifted back.

“Pass,” Sylvie said.

“It is… not my preferred choice,” Ravonna said.

“Why would I ever help you?” Sylvie said.

Ravonna paused for a moment, and scowled.

“I can offer a… deal,” Ravonna said, slowly. “The duty of the TVA is to prevent aberrant timelines from forming. Pruning is the most… efficient, but it is not our only option.”

“And threats. Of course,” Sylvie said.

“The opposite,” Ravonna said. “The TVA is finite, but large enough to have several spare areas, particularly with psycho-storage areas such as memory cells accounted for. Hypothetically, we could allow a select few variants to escape erasure and live outside of the sacred timeline - confined, yes, but comfortable, and alive.”

Sylvie hesitated, more out of confusion than interest. She’d been running from the TVA for centuries - and trying to find a way to fight back for ages. Now she was here and they were… what, being reasonable?

“What?” Sylvie said, flatly.

Ravonna grimaced. She hit a button on her desk.

The door opened; despite herself, Sylvie couldn’t help but yelp as another stranger walked in.

“Agent Mobius is better prepared to explain it,” Ravonna said, reluctantly.

Sylvie fidgeted, desperately wishing that she could at least cross her arms.

“There are a few kinds of divergent timelines,” Mobius said. “You’ve got your basic variants - free will causes someone to act off-script, and we swoop in and fix. You’ve got your knock-ons, which are when people like you get away and cause a bit more chaos before we stop you. And then there’s what the manual calls the clusterfucks.”

Mobius, at least, seemed to be trying to act as though there wasn’t a naked women in the room. Ravonna seemed, a little pettily, enjoying watching Sylvie fidget.

“Again,” Sylvie said, impatiently, “Why should I care?”

“Because these are rival timelines, potentially multiverse-ending timelines. A variant we haven’t been able to keep from wreaking havoc - and if we can’t survive long enough to set a reset charge, imagine what it’s like for the people in that universe,” Mobius said.

“Good for it,” Sylvie said. “Why is this my problem?”

“Because you caused it!” Ravonna snapped.

Sylvie paused. Mobius cleared his throat.

“I was gonna build to that,” Mobius said.

“She’s nearly ruined everything we’ve built,” Ravonna said. “Slapshod, lazy time travel with no care as to the damage she did. Not even realizing it, she’s almost destroyed everything.”

“Happy to help,” Sylvie said.

Mobius coughed, again.

“If I may,” he said. “There are three basic kinds of people. You have your normal folk, people who live their lives, and sometimes shuffle off the path, but they don’t stick out, cosmically speaking. And then there’s, well, people like you - chaotic elements. We see a lot of you here. You can’t keep to your assigned path, so the TVA needs to step in for variant after variant of you.”

Sylvie squirmed. Mobius talked a little bit faster.

“Short version, I’m kinda a Loki expert. We needed one,” Mobius said. “I know you put on an act of not caring, but you do - that, given a chance to save people, you would. That’s just who you are.”

Sylvie thought of the people in the cells. The people Ravonna had claimed might be able to live some kind of life. Of Ava, of…

She scowled.

“So I should listen to her holding the captives hostage?” Sylvie said.

“Huh?” Mobius said. He glanced back at Ravonna. “You led with the emotional ****, really?”

“It’s effective,” Ravonna said. “Altered memory cells, virtual lives off the timeline, wherever and whenever and however she wants. Everyone wins. They’re out of the timeline and they aren’t pruned.”

Something uncomfortable passed over Mobius’s face. He shook his head.

“Not the best first impression,” he said. He looked at Sylvie. “Actually I was hoping you’d help the people in the aberrant timeline. Whether or not you care about the risks of alternate timelines coming into conflict, the people in this branching stream are not doing well.”

Sylvie paused. What was going on here?

“Why?” she said, carefully.

“I said there are three kinds of people,” Mobius said. “Number three is, well, your Steve Rogerses and your Thanoses, the people that are so driven and dedicated to whatever their cause is, that unless something else massive changes, they never move away from their fate. They’re never nexus points, they’re focused and targeted and they will always live up to their destiny, across all timelines.”

“So imagine what happens when someone like that gets removed from their path,” Ravonna said. “All that drive, all that steadfast commitment, dedicated to the purpose of chaos.”

“Sounds perfect,” Sylvie said. Mobius sighed.

“Loki,” he said. “It’s a Hela.”

Sylvie flinched.

Her sort-of sister. She remembered her glimpses into Hela’s mind, all that cruelty that even she hadn’t been able to stomach, even after so long alone. She’d been… unforgiving.

“You took the goddess of **** out of her assigned role,” Ravonna said. “You told her about us, and you left her with infinity stones. We reset timelines after she’s left them, but by now she’s settled - Ragnarok undone, with all the infinity stones in hand. Several iterations of each, for good measure. She escaped even our best-equipped agents initially, and now even if we go in with a full gauntlet, she’s invulnerable.”

“We’ve never had to deal with an actual Hela before,” Mobius said. “That doesn’t help. She’s not one to be anything other than what she is. But you made her more powerful, and now there’s a timeline that she rules, and that she conquered.”

Sylvie hesitated.

She wasn’t to say she didn’t care. She wanted to say damn the TVA, let them struggle, let them suffer, let them send their agents to their ****. The multiversal drama sounded beyond made-up.

She didn’t exactly want to die - but given a choice between that and helping the TVA, she’d pick it.

But if she’d actually caused a timeline to be under the thumb of someone like Hela, or…

She paused.

“The people you took,” Sylvie said, slowly.

“The people you stripped naked and left for us to clean up, you mean?” Ravonna said.

Sylvie flushed.

“If she’s promised they’ll be spared, they will be,” Mobius said. “We can’t do it for everyone, we don’t have that much space, but a select handful, sure. You can pick - you can live with them, if you want. Consider it a thank you for helping the sacred timeline.”

“I’m not helping your stupid timeline,” Sylvie said.

She scowled, then softened.

“I’m helping her,” she said softly. She paused. “And stopping Hela. If it’s all I can do. This doesn’t mean I’m ever not going to fight you.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything else,” Mobius said. He smiled.

Ravonna, meanwhile, walked back to her desk. Sylvie shifted uncomfortably.

“Your cuffs will disengage when you’re back in real time,” Ravonna said, pulling a TemPad out from her desk. “I assume you know how to use these by now. It’s been modified - it won’t take you off the aberrant timeline, so you won’t have any safe places to hide.”

“You’re the one person Hela might not kill on sight,” Mobius said. “She doesn’t care that much about agents distant from her, but we don’t have charges with enough range to reach her. If you get close, I don’t know, do something. Reset, kill, steal the stones, anything.”

“And if I take all six for myself?” Sylvie said. Mobius laughed.

“Feel free,” he said. “No offence, but a Loki doesn’t scare us as much as she does.”

Ravonna put the modified TemPad down on the back of Sylvie’s bare thigh. Sylvie bit her lip. She’d almost forgotten that particular detail.

Do a mission for the TVA. She felt dirty. She also felt like Hela reached the status of ‘shared enemy,’ and if this was all that kept her and A- and the others from being pruned…

A TemPad that gave her free access to a timeline she had to erase. A chance to talk to Hela, hopefully stop her being a threat, to erase whatever awful variant timeline she masterminded, and then…

And then peace. She hadn’t imagined getting that. Or, at least, a chance to get away and fight again, especially if she could get the captives.

Sylvie cleared her throat.

“Er. Can I have something to wear?” Sylvie said.

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” Ravonna said, apparently still a little vengeful.

She tapped a button, and a portal opened.